But before we were able to leave China, we had a very typical Chinese moment. On the bus to Shanghai, a grandma walked her 2 year old grandson up to the front of the bus, sat him on the stairs, pulled down his pants, and let the kid pee down the stairs. Yup. On the bus. Very typical. The kicker? We were still at the rest stop!
Leaving that behind, we happily left China and spent the next few days being introduced to two different Kampucheas, the old one that was an Empire during the 9th-15th centuries, and the new one, that has spent the last 30 years recovering from genocide.
Our journey started in Phnom Penh with an old Whitworth friend of Lara's who is currently working in the Peace Corps. He gave us a tour of Phnom Penh, the current capital of Kampuchea where we like we were at the true heart of Kampuchea modern life. We arrived so grateful to escape the fireworks, yet we noticed that there were still so many Chinese lanterns. So we asked Lara's friend...
Lara: "Does Kampuchea celebrate Chinese New Year?"
Friend: "Nope. But they do celebrate the Lunar Festival."
This just cracked us up as we shared a look that said, the Chinese follow the lunar calendar so Chinese New Year and the Lunar Festival are the *SAME THING* But we didn't tell him that, we just let it go.
Streets of Phnom Penh as seen through a tuctuc:
After seeing the streets, and meeting the people, and being so pleasantly surprised by how gracious and helpful the Khmer (pronounced Kmy, meaning Cambodians) are, I was very taken aback to learn about their recent history. Despite hearing vague details over the course of my education, I never truly understood how devastating it was. (In case you already know, you may want to skip this paragraph). From 1975-1979, the Pol Pot Regime took over Kampuchea, named it "Democratic Kampuchea" and proceeded to systematically execute all intellectuals in the country while using all others as industrial slaves. It is estimated that about 3 million doctors, professors, politicians and anyone who had a voice were marched to the Killing Fields. It was Nazi concentration camps all over again. All of Khmer culture and education were lost during those years. Ten million landmines were laid, and only half so far have been found... either purposely sought or accidentally detonated by villagers.
A middle schooler's impression of the current state of her country entitled, "A sandglass to the future".
From Phnom Penh, with slightly heavy hearts, we moved up to Siem Reap. Video of the Khmer countryside as we bussed up to Siem Reap:
In Siem Reap, we learned of a totally different Kampuchea... A confident, dominating Kampuchea which was the Khmer Empire that ruled most of Vietnam, Laos, Siam (currently Thailand), and even Burma (currently Myanmar). As you can see, the region changes boarders and names very frequently. The city Siem Reap actually means "Siam Defeated", and was the site of a key battle to maintain the Khmer Empire. The story of this battle was told through carvings on the walls of my favorite temple, Bayon.
Streets of Siem Reap as seen by mountain bike (sorry, it was really rocky).
The Khmer built their Empire with Angkor as their capitol, and constructed a 402 sq km city with one million people and countless temples. May it be noted that when the temple of Bayon was built, it had characteristics of both Hindu and Buddhist temples, and the people lived peacefully as they saw they could actually share their faiths in one temple. This is what we got to explore by mountain bike with our personal guide, Vireak, a local Khmer. He is so knowledgeable about all the temples, he knows all the myths, stories, history, battles, religions and culture. In 15 minute he gave the most comprehensive lesson on the difference between Buddhism and Hindu (Sorry, Core 150 at Whitworth just didn't quite cut it). And half the time all I can think of is, this man has no grandparents because of the Pol Pot Regime. No one in Kampuchea does. Many like Vireak took up free lodgings at monasteries, worked for the monks, and spent their free time earning an education at the university in order to counter the devastation of the Pol Pot Regime. As we learned from Vireak the history of the city of Angkor, we had a keen sense of where the country started, how they had fallen, and we were looking for signs to see how the country was rebuilding itself.
An Apsara dance show. Young people learn the dances of their ancestors in order to tell their history. This is a fishing dance, meant to be flirtatious.
We spent the days biking through all the old temples. Some we stopped and walked through. Some we just biked by. It would take weeks to truly explore them all.
The temples were widespread throughout the city, so sometimes we just spent time in the countryside.
We had very few breaks those first few days in Kampuchea ... and this is what we discovered on one of those breaks ...
We pulled in to a small village who's entire livelihood is based on growing rice and harvesting palm tree juice. This is a typical house in that village.
On another lunch break, Vireak took us to eat at the river. We didn't realize it was the local swimming hole for the morning shift. These kiddos go to school from 7am - 11am. And then everyday they come here.
After three days of biking, we headed for Thailand, for a little R and R on the beach. We saw more dancing shows, and I've actually tried this type of dance last Chinese New Year!
We fed elephants, sometimes they wanted bananas, sometimes they were more curious about the camera ...
When we finally got home, we went straight to see Kate and Jett. Kate had taken him to the vet to get neutered, so when we arrived he was wearing the *cone of shame*, poor thing! Sorry the video is a little shakey. Each time I fall over and make a squeak, it means Jett tried to kiss my face.
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